Surely, I'm doing something wrong (Crafting)

[Mechanical Pear]

If I were wanting to make Alchemist's Fire using craft (alchemy), the DC is 20. If I wanted to do it in four hours (something I could manage during downtime, on an adventuring day), the DC is now 30.

The neccesary bonus I'd have to have to add to me taking ten is +37. 47*30 (1410), then divide by seven (to show daily progress instead of weekly) is 201. 201 silver pieces, or about 20 gold. Enough to finish one vial of alchemist's fire in one sitting.

+37? I thought crafting was easier than that. Crafter's Fortune spell (+5), Alchemical Lab (+2), INT mod (+1), Cauldron of Brewing (+5), Class Skill (+3), and five ranks in craft (+5) = +21. A roll result of 31. That's a lot of investment, financially, and that let's make 13/20ths of an alchemist's fire, in four hours.

Wasting feats and class options to make this better isn't quite worth it, really, even if I used Alchemist's Fire constantly to pump up my spells. To even get the above +21 bonus, I've already pumped in 7200 gp (8200 gp if I used a Page of Spell Knowledge to get Crafter's Fortune). I'd have to make over 630 vials before the investment of 8200 paid off. 630 four-hour craft sessions. Much better to spend all that time talking to NPCs, to learn all the rumors surrounding the mayor, or whatever the quest is about.

So, is crafting any use at all, outside of flavor? Or did I do the rules wrong?

[Calth]

Crafting mundane items in Pathfinder is pretty much a broken system outside of a few cases.

[Goddity]

The best use I can find for it is buying alchemy items half off at level 1. You can just declare you made them before the campaign began. (Some Gms are against this)

[DM_Blake]

I didn't check your math, but you're probably not doing it wrong. Crafting rules are silly. By design. Yes, it's intentional.

SOME things you can craft are potentially game breaking. For example, crafting deadly poisons for your weapons so you win every fight in the first round. The Developers wanted it to be possible, but didn't want people exploiting things like poisons, so they made it take a long time.

The downside is that they basically broke the system. Nobody has the time to craft anything useful. Only NPCs can be crafters now. More or less.

I do think it was their intent to prevent crafting from breaking the challenge system but I think they over-complicated it (lousy system where you can't even predict the time involved because the duration of the crafting is based on how well you roll), usually takes way too long, and it's extremely impractical financially.

There are hundreds of threads on these forums with people complaining about the same thing and creating house rules to fix it. Several 3rd party companies have published new crafting rules because of this.

[Chess Pwn]

Crafting fullplate takes like, 2 years or something ridiculously long. The Craft skills don't work well.

[Milo v3]

You might want to try unchained's crafting rules it's much faster.

[Helcack]

If you want to craft alchemical items be an alchemist, investigator or VMC alchemist to add your level to craft(alchemy) and if you pick up swift alchemy half the time. If you were a 5th level alchemist with similar investment, adding in the master alchemist feat and fungal brewing trait(along with being an int focused class):
Crafter's Fortune spell (+5), Fungal Brewing Trait (+2), Master Alchemist (+2), INT mod (+4), Cauldron of Brewing (+5), Class Skill (+3), and five ranks in craft (+5), Alchemy bonus from class levels (+5) = +33. A roll result of 41. That let's you in 5ish minutes make 1 alchemist's fire for 5 GP, because master alchemist let's you use GP instead of SP for crafting, swift alchemy makes it take 1/2 the time, and because fungal brewing reduces the cost of materials required by 20%.

It requires:
1 1st level extract
1 Trait
1 Feat
1 Magical Item(Alchemist's lab and Cauldron of Brewing's bonuses don't stack)
1 Class Skill
5 Skill ranks
2 Class abilities

You can ditch the magic item, and the extract if you don't mind it taking a bit longer though. Honestly, you should only be using craft for alchemy or traps if you are taking the specific feats and/or class abilities that make it good. Otherwise it 100% isn't worth your (or anyone other than your paid alchemist servants) time.

[Joey Cote]

There is also the Magic Tool of Manufacture out of Advanced Race Guide, gnome section. Allows you to craft 2000gp worth of materials in one hour, once per day. Requires you to have 6 ranks in the appropriate crafting skill to use the item however, guess you could UMD it though.

Some of the item creation doesn't seem quite so far fetched to me. A set of fitted full plate would take an enormous amount of time, from drawing steel into wire to make the chainmail portions to attaching and fitting all the plate and straps needed. All using medieval type equipment. Having multiple smiths work on it should reduce the time greatly, but the system only allows for someone to assist, and that +2 mod is nothing.